


Ebb and Flow

by InALessLethalDress



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Reylo - Freeform, TFA - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21937036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InALessLethalDress/pseuds/InALessLethalDress
Summary: They enthrall and derange each other. Just the interrogation scene in The Force Awakens; a friend requested it so I thought I may as well put it up.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Ebb and Flow

A dull metallic thud fractured the low, continuous electronic hum hovering just beyond consciousness. Rey came to herself with a jerk. A cursory glance downwards confirmed what her body already told her - restraints at both forearm and ankle held her immobile and almost upright, except for the slightest tilt backwards in the interrogation apparatus which formed the cold, unyielding surface at her back. Anger surged; the monster had _cheated._

Then, fear. Rey had a fair idea of the torment housed within the room she was inhabiting. Stamping the fear down was the work of the blink of an eye - life on Jakku had been useful for some things, at least. The taste of it remained, though, lending a jagged edge to her fury. Being cut down by lightsaber or blaster was one thing. Forced to submit to torture, strapped down, helpless? **_Never_** , something within her snarled.

She flicked her hard gaze to the other presence in the room, unsurprised to find herself not alone. Kylo Ren - _he? it?_ \- crouched opposite her, closer than she'd expected, not nearly far enough away for her peace of mind. Motionless, relaxed even, as though he could remain in that position for days. As though he had already been there some time. Watching her, she acknowledged, her palms dampening.

Motionless, but not **still**. She could feel the roiling, seething darkness inside him. Had _been_ aware of it, even before coming fully to wakefulness. Her mind shied away from examining that too closely. Didn't know what it meant, didn't know how to deal with it. Whatever _it_ was, he must be doing it, and hatred rose like bile in her throat, threatening to choke her with panic.

"Where am I?" Her voice kicked upwards as she made the demand, not quite steady, eyes wide and all too revealing. Rey heard the hint of tears rising, and despised herself for her weakness.

"You are my guest." The distorted voice was somehow still smooth, deep, compelling. It was not entirely robotic; there was the hint of sardonic amusement in the words - the mask this monster wore had not removed all trace of emotion when he had spoken to her in the forest, either. She would have infinitely preferred it if it had.

"Where are the others?" she managed, more forcefully, and real fear tightened her chest. _Finn, Han, Chewie, BB-8_...fragile, green shoots, the beginning of belonging. If he had hurt them-

"You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?" The rich, sibilant tones interrupted her spiralling thoughts, and she hauled in a shallow breath, bracing herself. "You'll be relieved to hear I've no idea."

Relief flooded her, but there was no time to rejoice; she had her own problems. Her lips closed and she stared at this faceless, murderous snake who had made himself her nemesis, willing him to feel all her sharp, endless hostility. _I will make you bleed,_ she promised herself. _I will make you regret making me fear again_.

"You still want to kill me," he mused quizzically, tilting his head slightly as he contemplated her. There was a wealth of complexity buried deep beneath his words; he sounded almost- surprised, accepting, resigned, hurt, amused, pensive... Rey slammed shut that line of thought, gathering righteous rage to her like a camp-fire, shaping it until she saw it in her mind's eye, bright and steady. What else had he expected?

"That happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask," she returned coldly, her tone contemptuous. That was all he was, this Kylo Ren whose reputation made grown men pale and quake. Nothing more than a twisted, evil monster, so steeped in darkness he could not bear to face the world boldly with his own two eyes, a coward who hid in the shadows to work his malignant will on others. She looked upon him with frozen scorn. Such a creature was not worthy of even her fear.

A beat of time, then-

Black leather-clad hands lifted to deftly manipulate the mechanism on his mask, and it hissed as the mouthpiece moved out and up. Some instinct raised the tiny hairs on the back of Rey's neck - _no no no this was not what was supposed to happen_ \- and she had to smother the urge to cry out in denial. Too late, for he was lifting the helmet from his head and straightening to his full, imposing height, facing her at last.

She blinked, her body going lax with incomprehension.

No mask. No barriers. Nothing between them but imprisoning metal, which kept Rey from going for his throat and raking his bare skin with her nails. Yet, strangely, she had no thought of that. She had no thought at all. The visceral sight of him shook her to the core. There was a curious mixture of arrogance and defiance in his stance as he watched her take him in, though his face was impassive. As counter-moves went, it was unexpected.

Rey clutched at a scrap of thought in the maelstrom of her mind - how many other prisoners ( _guest_ , his voice insisted) were privileged to see the man beneath the mask? None, she knew with swift, startling clarity. And his allies, his precious Order? No, to remove his mask was to be vulnerable, and men in Kylo Ren's position could not afford to be seen as human. Ruling through fear and intimidation would not be conducive to trust, she imagined. Rey doubted he'd had a friend in his life.

Extinguishing a flicker of- _what? affinity? empathy? compassion?_ \- her bewildered eyes searched his face, grappling with what confronted her. _Young._ She didn't know what she'd expected, but it had not been- this. Her indrawn breath was audible. Not much older than her, surely. She could have coped with that. But where was the evil stamped across his features? Why was the mouth not twisted cruelly, where was the maniacal gleam in the eyes? How was it possible that the catalogue of his sins was not clearly visible? She thought he had been hiding his darkness from view. Instead, instead-

Her brow furrowed, and her eyelids flickered over the rest of him in a fleeting assessment. Too tall, too broad, swathed head to toe in unrelieved black contrasting with the gleam of his pale skin in the harsh light of the console, rendering the thick, unruly dark hair even more striking, and his **_eyes_** -

altogether too much.

Her lips quivered. This was not what an irredeemable nightmare should look like, Rey thought resentfully. The flurried thoughts chased their way across her mind; she dared not suppose how much of them he had read in her face.

Evidently deciding she'd had more than enough time to recover from the shock, he moved to her left, depositing the mask on a plinth obviously made for the purpose. The dull, clanging crunch had a knell of finality about it.

She glanced away quickly, staring doggedly ahead as booted feet drew near, pausing directly in front of her. _Too close._ Ren was silent, watchful; if it were possible, Rey tensed even further, her nerves screaming as he loomed over her, hands lightly clasped behind his back. Unable to resist, her eyes were drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. She wrenched them away, setting her teeth against the moisture stinging her eyeballs. Her breath came faster and shorter; images of what he might do, what he **could** do to her in this state flooded her mind, and she had to summon all her willpower not to give in to the rising, clawing terror. Mentally scrambling to prepare herself for the onslaught she was sure he would unleash, she was momentarily unbalanced when:

"Tell me about the droid." He spoke mildly, but unquestionably it was a command. This close, his shoulders nearly filled her vision, but she refused to look at him as she replied, marshalling her meagre defences as best she could, for surely, surely, this calm before the storm would not last...

On a quick inhale, she said calmly and informatively, "He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator-"

He interrupted her unceremoniously, not seeming at all put out by her wilful misunderstanding of his enquiry. "It's carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest," the proud tilt of his strong chin and the direction of his gaze indicated who 'we' were; "recovered from the archives of the Empire," his eyes returned to her face, "but we need the last piece, and somehow you convinced the droid to show it to you." The minute quirk of his brows revealed his bafflement. "You," he continued, tipping his head back as though it would help him decipher the puzzle she presented, "a scavenger."

Tears were ready to fall now, though his tone held no real hint of the disdain his words implied; but his patent bemusement at her role in all this flicked her on the raw. She was used to being regarded as nothing, nothing but space-trash, but since the advent of BB-8 and Finn on Jakku, she had been treated totally differently, and (stars help her) she liked it. Could get used to it. The fact that this disturbing creature, observing her so intently, dismissed her as being of no account filled her with irrational fury.

Folding her lips closed, she gave him back look for look, breathing heavily through her nose. She would give him **_nothing!_**

He read her resolve in the defiant tilt of her chin, and his gaze lowered for a moment as he absorbed the implications. She felt it like a physical touch on her body and clenched her fists, eyes fixed painfully on his face. Emotions flitted too quickly across the high, broad brow for her to read, but as their gazes locked and held, she could swear he looked almost- pained. _He must have done something to my head when he knocked me out_ , she thought viciously. And then she was sure of it:

"You know I can take whatever I want," he told her softly, warningly. Uttered in that tone, so close she could see the traceries of blue beneath his clear, pale skin, the words created an appalling stab of intimacy, as seductive as it was unwelcome. His deep-set eyes, under the straight black brows, bored into her, intensity etched beneath the hard planes of his face, softened only by the lush, sensual mouth above a firm, pointed chin. Rey could feel the strength in him, reaching for her, his will threatening to engulf her. So easy. It would be so easy to give in, he wanted her to give in, _he didn't want to have to hurt her_...

She turned her face away. However confusing it was that Kylo Ren hadn't even raised his voice to her yet, this was what sadistic people like him did. They toyed with their victims before going in for the kill. She'd known it was only a matter of time before his true nature surfaced. Well. Let him do what he liked; she could withstand a great deal of physical pain, and if she focused hard on Finn and Han, and the ethereal promise of Luke Skywalker, then perhaps she would die before betraying her friends.

The breath hissed through her teeth. **This** \- this was different. _Other_.

Moisture, sweat or tears, or both, gathered and slicked her neck as she tensed under the invasion. Shocking in its suddenness, and all the more so for its being mental. Rey had been prepared for knife, flame and needle. She was totally blindsided by his swelling, inexorable push, the sensation alien, as though- as though he were with her, _inside_ her.

His gloved hand hovered mere inches from her head, capable of smashing her skull open with one blow, and yet, here and now, absurdly restrained, even- tentative. In stark counterpoint, he entered her mind without finesse, tearing through her barriers as though they were paper. It was insulting, how easily, how deeply he could delve.

He leant over her, questing fingers tracing the contours of her inner landscape, and she turned her head as far from him as the headrest would allow, gasping, the cords standing out on her neck with the effort to repulse his marauding progress.

Again he surprised her. "You're so lonely," he murmured, head bowed, reflected pain infusing his voice. Helpless tears slipped down her cheeks as she strained against his presence in her mind. A tangible thing, it felt like **him** , big and dark, all soft, supple leather and howling, swirling chaos. All-encompassing and terrifying.

"So afraid to leave," the soft voice said meditatively. No. _No no nonono_. It wasn't the droid Ren was looking for, this was something else, something private, he couldn't have _this_ -

Her body trembled and jerked, a physical manifestation of her inner turmoil, and he paused, allowing the echoes of her desolate existence to sink into his bones. This close, he didn't have to be inside her mind to sense her fear; he could **smell** it on her, the salt of her sweat, the frantic beating of her pulse, the trickle of tears down her throat. Mesmerised, he couldn't look away - the curve of her cheek and the down on her skin made up all the world.

His brow contracted as he crested a wave of barren sand in her mind and saw what lay the other side. Pain. So much pain. Loss beyond imagining. Isolation so profound his face twisted. "At night, desperate to sleep," he pushed harder, deeper, compelled to _know_ , to see what she did, "you imagine an ocean." Satisfaction tinged his voice, and recognition. Not the place, exactly, but the feeling. It touched a chord within his mind, but he was too intent on her to explore it.

It was the little scavenger he wanted, _needed_ to explore. There was unsuspected strength here, a fiery spit of hope which had sustained her through what he now knew to be a bleak, wasted life of waiting. He saw it. He saw it all. There was nothing she could hide from him. Kylo had to resist the roaring sense of triumph that followed on the heels of that thought.

Rey's breath was sobbing between her lips. She was unable to stop the shaking of her limbs as he pried her secrets from her. After his first blunt penetration, he had gentled, and now delicately panned for the gold of her mind, wielding his power as skillfully as a surgeon would a blade. It only made her hate him more. How **dare** he paw through her memories as though turning the pages of a book? How _**dare**_ he not make it hurt, so she could focus on that instead of the anguish he was taunting her with?

_No. Not taunting_ , Rey realised, stunned. It was what she expected, he was in the position to do so, and yet...Kylo Ren was simply verbalising her reality, in a way that no one ever had, in a way **she** never had, even to herself. Because it was too dangerous, because if she relaxed her guard for a minute, she would come flying apart. Because it was more manageable and sensible to focus on one day at a time, live from one meal to the next, one more tally crossed off on the AT-AT's hull, rather than allow herself to think for one moment and see the hopelessness of her life.

This- _crea_ ture, whose insidious scent curled about her - spice, pine, and something indefinable, very much what she had always imagined the sea to smell like - was dismantling her carefully constructed foundations one by one, and holding a mirror up to her. And she ** _loathed_** him for it. For the pain, and the pity, she heard in his voice. What did it say about her that a holographic reel of her life could make a monster like Kylo Ren feel those things?

"I see it," his breath caressed the shell of her ear as his eyes moved hungrily over all of her face that was available to him. Kylo had ceased to examine why he was informing her of each new layer he peeled away. Instinct had ruled this confrontation since her star-eyes had widened impossibly once he'd removed his mask. No, be **fore** that, even. For he had not intended to do so.

"I-I see the island." Beautiful. It was so beautiful. Wild, and storm-ravaged, teeming with life. Ancient and new, and somehow, like _her_. Like home. He pressed on quickly, shrugging off the ridiculous thought tendril. A means to an end, that's all the scavenger was, dispensable, a nonentity. The droid. He needed to find the map embedded in the girl's head. But-

"And Han Solo," he said flatly, heavy lids covering his expression for a moment as her memories and feelings associated with his father burst into view, vivid, soft, and hopeful. Excited. Fury erupted along his veins; he shook his head once, minutely, in denial. His face when he raised it, was obsidian-hard, jaw tight and out-thrust. "You feel like he's the father you never had," he accused, his voice becoming molten, feral. The urge to smash, to rend, to destroy, unfurled within him, stretching lazily with a predatory smile. He could rip her to shreds with his bare hands. But it was Han Solo he truly wanted to maim, to kill. His mouth worked.

"He would have disappointed you," he informed her curtly. Foolish, naive little-

A red haze of anger misted Rey's vision. "Get out of my head!" she rasped, and he rose abruptly. _Enough_. He stood before her, hand extended towards her as he prepared to collide with her mind again.

Ren's voice was rough with impatience. "I know you've seen the map," he reminded her. "It's in there." He was sure. "And now you'll give it to me," he stated, channelling focus into his assault.

She faced him head-on with gritted teeth, every sinew taut. This was it, he had been holding back, but her time had run out, the sand had given way beneath her feet, and now he would unleash everything he had in her, she would be powerless to prevent it, and _oh_ the bitter taste of failure in her mouth-

Grunting with effort, her head came up as she fought him, blindly in her mind. He danced and spun with all his graceful, trained savagery while she slipped and fumbled, having no clear idea of what she was doing but only sure that she must ** _try_** ,

and then,

and, oh.

Where before she had felt like a territory invaded, conquered, now there was a- a _bridge_ , a link blazing into sudden, glorious existence, with her on one side, and on the other-

Wonderment. Unease. A faltering. "Don't be afraid." Ren's face puckered. Was he soothing her, or himself? A little of both? "I feel it too." They stared at each other for a timeless moment, and Rey nearly laughed aloud, because, for the first time, she was not alone, and it felt dizzying, like looking over a stomach-churning drop in a burnt-out Star-Destroyer. But in an instant, she remembered exactly who it was that was sharing her mind-space, and snarled.

"I'm not giving you _any_ thing!" she asserted, panting, face set in stubborn lines.

"We'll see," he retorted, eyes narrowing with renewed purpose, even as his lips quirked in immediately suppressed admiration. Such strength of will. Almost a match for his own.

He redoubled his efforts, drinking deep of the Force, calling all his power in the Dark to his aid. The sooner he found the map, the sooner he could dispose of the girl, the better for his peace of mind. He _reached_ ,

**pushed** ,

and met resistance. Rebellion.

His lips parted in shock. He couldn't have pulled his gaze from the girl's now if he tried. What was ** _this?_** His brow furrowed; he felt untethered, adrift in the Outer Rim far from the sheltering range of his command ship. Why he should have tried to reassure the scavenger, he couldn't imagine. She didn't - couldn't! - know how unique this was, how- unsettling. Sinking into the fascinating depths of her consciousness was one thing. If she learnt to navigate the bridge into his...

Ice crept down his spine, and Kylo Ren was afraid. His brows snapped together, disbelief writ large across his face. She was gasping, but in her face was a gathering determination, her face pushed forward pugnaciously towards his, and he sensed her fear of him rapidly receding, replaced by calm steel and monumental effort. _Unacceptable_. He struck out viciously with the Force, lashing with increasing desperation at the solid wall of her approaching Light across the bridge to his mind from hers.

Surreal. That was the word. Rey bit back a bubble of hysteria. She could see it all, spread out like the endless undulating dunes of Jakku, tricky to navigate, but not impossible. If she pushed _here_ , and evaded the conflagration of his rage **there** , then she just might slip-

It was like trying to lift a planet with her shoulders. Ren's will, the shields about his mind were formidable, insurmountable. _And yet_. She forgot where they were, the restraints holding her in place may as well not have existed. All that mattered was him, and her. The push and pull between them. His mind was lava and rock, spitting and exploding in a deafening, scorching cacophony, painted black and red. Her grin held teeth. _Sand puts out fires, Kylo Ren_ , she gloated inside her head. She had enough sand in her mind to douse every flame he had.

He had pushed his way into her mind, but that was not the way of it for her. She could see how. She just needed to-

_open_. And he would have no choice but to flow in.

Rey surrendered. For the first time in her life, she let go of her wrestle for control, the fight to survive, the voracious scavenging spirit which had kept her alive. She floated for a brief moment on an ocean of peace before the inferno which was Kylo Ren surged into her on the same tide. It took effort not to fight the connection, not to push him away instinctively. But oh, so worth it. Rey was almost smiling as she regarded him from beneath lowered brows.

"You," she bit out. "You're afraid." She frowned, but it was true. He was full of fear. It ruled him. It was all here, in her head. The haunted face before her confirmed it.

So she pushed. "That you will never be as strong as Darth Vader!" she concluded on a note of triumph, the energy she had expended to gain even that much from him leaving her on a shaky exhale as he severed the connection with a savage slice of his hand.

Ren staggered slightly as he took an instinctive step away from this new threat, his breath gushing out in a sound like that of a wounded animal. He stared at her - _Rey, her voice reminded him smugly_ \- the revelation of her power shuddering through him. **Raw** power, untamed _Light_ filled her to the brim and overflowed, and she had resisted him with surprising deftness once she had overcome her own shock. He had still not overcome his own. He struggled for self-possession, for the safety of inscrutability, but his heart juddered within the cage of his ribs, and he could do little more than drink her in, open-mouthed. The thought surfaced: _an equal_ , and his chest expanded with a euphoria which slew him.

The scavenger - _Rey_ \- had left him stripped and raw, enthralled and deranged by her potent blend of fragility and strength. Those moments when their minds had merged...he almost reached out for it again

**_wantwantwantwant_ **

but checked himself. Time enough for that when he had turned her. Until then, he would resist the pull to her Light. For she _would_ come to him. It was unthinkable that she should not. That he would not possess her. All of her. He almost licked his lips in anticipation.


End file.
